Explosions in the Sky

Dear Kay and Conversely,

I would like to introduce you. You are both my friends and you both like Explosions in the Sky. This post is for you with special thanks to Kay for the media elements. Little did you know that you both were at the same concert together. Had I been there, I would have introduced you and said, Conversely, this is Kay. She is wonderful. And then I would have said Kay, this is Conversely, he is wonderful. And Avery and T. Azimuth.



People are like explosions to me. I love how they explode into my life and light up my skies. I hate it when they go away and drizzle into the obscurity of the night. One late July 4 night I stood on the boardwalk in Cape May, New Jersey, with one of my oldest friends. Usually, when we watch fireworks together, we do it from a distance. That year we decided to get up close and personal with the explosions. The guns themselves were stationed on a barge that was anchored 100 yards or so out in the Cape May waters. Normally, the swell of the ocean there is so tempered by the rush of the Delaware Bay, that waves don't "make no nevermind." But it was stormy that night and the barge rocked both with the push of the elements and the recoil of the discharges. Explosions lit the sky as usual, but sparks and the litter of packing showered around us. Together we dodged the attack, but without any hint of retreat. Unforgettable.

I wish you all had met.

Betsy

What is Southern Literature?: A Survey

The question for this month's survey is: What is Southern Literature?

You may have an answer and I would like to hear it. Meanwhile, I have collected some thoughts on this topic which I will add at various intervals. I have some thoughts of my own, which I may add here, or later. If I have a quote from someone that you feel doesn't fully express that person's usual opinion on the matter, feel free to post a correction.

The question stems from my thinking about the characteristics of certain writing classified as "Southern" with a capital S, that establishes it as a category. It is my opinion that this category does exist, but that it has boundaries based on certain characteristics. I'm just not yet quite sure what all of those characteristics are. I'd like to know what you think. What, do you think those characteristics are that contribute to the body of literature we recognize as Southern?

Eugene Onegin: Part One, Sets and Singers

Dear Anne GG, cadh8, Kay, Elaine, Amy, and Other Lovers of Opera,

The other night I was flipping channels. (Well, let's be real, my husband was flipping channels. I personally have never actually held the remote control.) However, he flipped to PBS and I said, "STOP!" with undeniable firmness. Since I rarely react that strongly to TV programming, he stopped. And he immediately knew, that the die had been cast for the next few hours of viewing. It was an opera.

Opera trumps Law and Order, opera trumps The Office, opera trumps American Idol, opera trumps all.

The work was one this year's Metropolitan Opera TV features, Eugene Onegin.

I loved this opera. (I know, I say this after almost every opera.) But this production had it all. The singers were fabulous and one did not outshine the others.
Renee Fleming, one of the current reigning divas was great as Tatiana.
Dmitri Hvorostovski as Onegin(As Seinfeld would say, "I can't say it, but I think it's spelled like the symbol for Argon.")
Ramon Vargas as Lenski--This guy has an amazing voice.

I won't say any more about the singers, but it was joyful to hear them. Here are some pix and then I want to talk about the amazing minimalist sets.





The sets were bare, except for a few devices, a sweet minimalism. Some of the scenes used leaves as the only props with enormous walls edging the stage. One scene began with a chorus (excellent vocals) of women sweeping leaves. They began in center stage and swept a perfect oval. By the time they exited the oval of open floor had been prepared for the entrance of Tatiana and Onegin. Impressive. Several of the scenes surrounded the action with a rectangle of chairs. In the ball scene the wooden chairs, each different with delicate, open-worked backs, embraced the crowded dance floor. It was like the baby bear's porridge.

The Onegin story was written by Pushkin--Opera by Tchaikovsky. I really need to read the Pushkin story and then comment about it. It fits in with some things I've been contemplating about moral choice. And I'd like to compare the poetic artistry of the Pushkin work with the musical artistry of the composition by Tchaikovsky. The primary defining feature of Pushkn's writing in this work is that it is almost entirely written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme "aBaBccDDeFFeGG", where the lowercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the uppercase letters represent masculine rhymes. This form has become known as the "Onegin stanza" (or "Pushkin sonnet"). Is that amazing or what?

Betsy aka Mom

Not Zorro, Not Zorro

Dear Keebler Elves,

One of my favorite commercials of all times was the "Not Elves" commercial that got me hooked on E.L. Fudge cookies. You remember, Ernie, in it you elves, for certain marketing reasons, denied that you were cookie-making elves.

Well, raccoon denial may be similar to elf denial. At least for some time I was not sure of the existence of two raccoons. Hence I was in denial. Now I have photographic proof.




Pix 1: Proof of dual existence. There are two raccoons.

The question you may ask is, "How does one identify the difference between raccoons." Well, there are two answers: behavior and looks. The video below is "Not-Zorro." He is very nervous and ready to run on a moments notice. Were I to move too quickly or "heaven forbid" open the sliding glass door, he would waddle away at top speed, which for raccoons I have observed is about 0.1 mph. Zorro, on the other hand, would look up and say with his eyes, "Hi there."


The look of raccoons really is different, just like elves. If you compare the videos, surely you too will begin to see the subtle differences.

You Keebler Elves, Ernie, Fast Eddie, Flo, and all, may continue to deny your own existence as cooking-baking beings, but I know for sure that their are two raccoons, Zorro, and um.m.m, Not-Zorro.

Betsy

Survivor

Dear Fine Institutions of Education,

This morning I had breakfast with a young man. Let’s call him "A". He told me of his education in Africa. Sometimes, when his family had $50 he could study for one semester. They did not often have $50. I read a paper that he wrote. In it he spoke of that time. He said he lusted for education. He told me how grateful he is that he can now study every single day, every single semester.

(I think of other boys I have known at his age. They may have lusted, but it was not usually for education.)

Coming to the United States as a UN refugee in 2004, this young man began to learn English, to write papers, to enjoy the benefits of mandatory public education. For him this was a great gift.

After breakfast this morning, my husband left to take this guy to a small junior college to participate in an open house and, later this afternoon, to try out for a soccer team. Perhaps, soccer will provide the avenue by which "A" may continue his education.

"A" has given me permission to let you read an essay that he wrote. It is not perfect grammatically. It may lack polish. However, those things might betray an institution if they were to use those criteria or the results of a standard testing measure to exclude this person from participating in the academy. If I were an institution seeking students. I would seek this boy.

---

I am a survivor
I woke in the morning, heard the sound of soldiers banging on the door trying to get in the house. Daddy told us, “kids go under the bed”, I didn’t see my father again for two years. I’m one of the many survivors who endured the 1998 civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo; I didn’t see anything but the importance of surviving from the war.

I survived in the most disastrous war despite the important of names that brought hatred, and killing between I and Congolese civilians and soldiers. Because of my name, "A", I was buried into a shadow of death; just because the name I had represent me and the rebel. Most people labeled me names like “rebel”, “kanyamurege”, and “cockroach”, to determine rebellion between them and me. Because of the birth name I carried, people began to attempt to kill me. I was a survivor of the name tragedy when people tried to kill me; my name brought suffering, lonely, and painful in my life at that time. I wouldn’t be here today if I wasn’t a survivor. I was one of the scared boys who always thought I can die today or tomorrow but was still standing and afraid of dying. Just because I carried that name I was in the very dangerous moments that allowed people to come and try to burn me alive. When I mean burn, that’s they were trying to catch me and put gasoline all around my body and start burning me. For example “American barbeques meats” but I was supposed to be the meat who got barbeque with gasoline around me, but nothing happened because I ran away from them. The reactions made me start thinking of what strategy can I use to be able to survive.

Nothing helped me to survival in 1998 war except what I learned and what I had been told by my parents. “Son, never put your self first, but last.” My parents wanted me to understand society life matters not movements that were going on. As always taught to me "patience and self control is always the first goal to survive situations" I used that same goal to protect myself and my family to stay away from getting killed. I was patience that time, escaping troubles and being around people who knew me; and always remembering the word, patience and self control, is the key in my life as a survivor.

I used self control to be a very skeptical young boy to people around me and to protect my family at the same time. I was about to get poisoned by my own friends. They put soda, a very strong African poison, into my food I was about to eat that food but someone told me to not. I lost the beautiful trust that I had for my friends just because of that step and I couldn’t trust my friends any more. I was automatically being skeptical before doing or taking a step. For example, I lost my beloved once just because of lack of self control and patience in their step; they were burned by Congolese civilians.

Finally I came to discover one important key to survive, faith, I saw myself getting on my knees, trying to put my faith into God’s hands but still scared of getting killed. Faith helped me to stand and look forward to survive the war. By the grace of God, I am a survivor. No matter what situations comes into my life I will succeed and continue be a survivor.

---

I find this all very amazing. Sitting across the breakfast table from a young, bright-eyed man who enjoys bacon and eggs, liked seeing a raccoon, and teases my son because he couldn't remember the words "A's" mother told him to tell me, I would be tempted to forget, that this person grew up hiding from from rebel bands instead of participating in marching bands. But that difference is the very thing that "A" will use to survive and succeed in this culture. Perhaps one day, he will lead us and we will all benefit from the inner strength that he has to offer.

Betsy

P.S. Got a scholarship? I've got the recipient for you.

Ben Jelloun Draws Such Strange Words in the Sand

Dear Tahar Ben Jelloun,

Sand Child, your book of storytellers and gender shifts in Morocco was a bit difficult for me to understand. No, it was very difficult for me to understand. It is a puzzle. It reminded me of the first time I tried to solve a cryptogram in a newspaper. I looked at those coded letters believing solution to be impossible. No one could do this, I was sure, and then I began the process of finding the answer. My early attempts at cryptograms were halting and frustrating, as have been my first brushes with your book.

Immediately, I believed the book was a critique of gender in the world of Islamic Morocco. I tried to understand the movement of the book in that context and though it seems there is some comment on that issue within the text, I think I would be mistaken to believe that the presentation of gender is more than the model or symbolic metaphor you have chosen as a vehicle for a very different message.

Fortunately, my friends from the book club have been feeding me ideas. One said that she thought the imagery carried the weight of colonialism and the response of Morocco to the intrusion of Western will upon the culture. Is that it? I know very little of the history of this land, so fitting that jigsaw together would be daunting. Then I found some things on Laila Lalami’s blog (affectionately remembered as moorishgirl.com) that suggested an even more intellectually complicated ending. Then I followed the track of Borjes, gathering more evidences of how, perhaps, you expect this book to be interpreted.

Then I read your biography on your official Web site http://www.taharbenjelloun.org. He are interesting snippets:

July 1966: my philosophy studies are interrupted; I am sent to a disciplinary camp run by the army.

In June 1971, a statement of the Interior Ministry announced that philosophy teaching is to be arabized as of the new school year. Not being trained for it, I requested an exemption from the Ministry and decided to leave for Paris and prepare a PhD in psychology.

June 1975: I defended my doctoral thesis in social psychiatry on “affective and sexual problems of northern-African workers in France”.

1984 : “Hospitalité française”, essay on racism in France

1985: “L’enfant de sable”, novel, Le Seuil.

Most of my work is translated into Arabic. Unfortunately, the Moroccan edition of which I revise the translation is systematically pirated by pseudo-editors in Syria and Egypt. To make matters worse, they redo the translation and take out fragments susceptible of annoying the local censorship. I have so often protested against these practices that I have come to believe this to be a lost cause. The piracy that afflicts the Arab world is symptomatic of the condition of its culture.

I chose these tidbits because I think they shed light on the book and my understanding. As I understand more, perhaps I will come to understand whether they inform my thinking. Here are some more factoids from less authorized Web sites.

Quoting Ben Jelloun and from a critic "Arabic is my wife and French is my mistress; and I have been unfaithful to both," it is obvious though that bilingualism is an integral part of his life as well as a theme in his works.

And also from that source, “Ben Jelloun draws upon his experience as a psychotherapist for his creative writing.”

And here: The novel is written in highly poetic language and does not have a linear narrative. The prose seems to recreate the dissociation experienced by the child.

Well, all that is interesting. And, I like cryptograms.

Betsy

Nebuchadnezzar and Solomon

Dear Animal Lovers,

I just wanted to show the animals in the petting zoo, the domesticated ones.



Who was shaking that camera?

Betsy

P.S. Perhaps I should say a little more about these animals. The white one, Nebuchadnezzar, is an Arab. He is dear and smart but literally afraid of his own shadow. This causes problems while riding, when, he inadvertantly and unexpectedly sees his own shadow. He isn't actually white, but what they call flea-bit, light gray with rusty colored dot-smears on him. The dark one, Solomon, is part Apaloosa but looks like a Morgan (who knows). He is wonderful to ride--has a nice smooth gait. However, he can at times use his size to his own advantage. I am working on teaching him not to do that.

Books, Music and Studies of the Year 2007

This is a list. I am tracking my year of reading, listening, and studying.

Under Books I’m listing books that I’ve basically read straight through or perhaps read “mostly.” Does that last part sound like I’m cheating. Yes, perhaps under one definition of cheating. That would be the third grade, sitting on a stool in Ms. Bowers room and under her steel-eyed glare, saying, “Yes, Mzbowrz, I did read about Guatamalan exports, but I forget,” when really you did not read about Guatamala at all, but sat on your bed the night before with the social studies book on your lap while you traced the pattern of the pine knots of your bedroom paneling with your finger-definition of cheating. See note below for my current definition.*

Also, reading for me is usually done in audio form. I listen to books and agree with author Orson Scott Card who says that listening to books aloud is the best way to read because you can read with your eyes shut and just allow the mind pictures to form.

Under Music I'm listing the music that is important to me. Thus it is heavy on the classical. I will also list other things that I find that strike me as fine. I am also working on a "Requiem Mix" list, just because.

Books

The Last Gentleman—Walker Percy—End of 2006
As I Lay Dying—William Faulkner—End of 2006
Bel Canto—Ann Patchett
The Plague—Albert Camus
The Moviegoer—Walker Percy
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits—Laila Lalami
The Libretto for Tosca
Truth:Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough to Tell—Ellen Douglas
A Street in Marrakech—Elizabeth Fernea
Secrets of Videoblogging—Michael Verdi and Ryanne Hodson
The Sand Child—Tahar Ben Jelloun (My post on this)
The Abolition of Man—C.S. Lewis (My post on this.)
The Book of Isaiah
The Gospel of John
The Trouble with Poetry—Billy Collins
Lancelot—Walker Percy
Enders Shadow—Orson Scott Card
The Turn of the Screw—Henry James
King Lear—William Shakespeare
Taming of the Shrew—Shakespeare
Cymbeline—Shakespeare
New Southerners—Discussions with and Readings by Emerging Southern Writers from the National Humanities Center
Eugene Onegin and other poems by Alexander Pushkin Translated by Charles Johnson (a.k.a. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin)
Saving Grace by Lee Smith
The African-American Audio Experience—This set included readings from Langston Hughes, Mikki Giovanni, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Included was a full dramatized reading of Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.
Year of the Elephant—A Moroccan Woman's Journey Toward Independence—Leila Abouzeid
The Stranger—Albert Camus
Black Boy—Richard Wright
American Hunger—Richard Wright
Much Ado About Nothing—Shakespeare in the Square
Teacher Man—Frank McCourt
At Canaan's Edge—Taylor Branch
The Penultimate Peril—Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler
The Bad Beginning—Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler
Remembering Jim Crow—Stephen Smith, Kate Ellis, and Sasha Aslanian
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination—Toni Morrison
Lemony Snicket—The Unauthorized Biography—Daniel Handler (Which reminded me very much of the graphic work of an unknown Mississippian whose work, Sandusky Review, vol.1, I had on order, but whose distributer, sold out of and is dragging his feet about publishing a second run, believe that or not.)
The Grim Grotto—Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler
More Super Sudoku—(OK so I'm an addict. But I can finally do these things!)
The End—Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler
The Kite Runner—by Khaled Hosseini
Sense and Sensibility—by Jane Austen
The Space Between Us—by Thrity Umrigar
Hamlet—by William Shakespeare
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books—by Azar Nafisi
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self Help Book—by Walker Percy
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith—by Anne Lamott
The Inheritance of Loss—by Kiran Desai
Lolita—by Vladimir Nabokov
Tears of the Giraffe—by Alexander McCall Smith
The Thanatos Syndrome—by Walker Percy

Music
The things listed here are either CDs or live performances or TV/video/DVD performances

La Boheme—Knoxville Opera Company—Live
Tosca—Leontyne Price—CD
I Puritani—Metropolitan Opera/Public TV Broadcast—Anna Netrebko
The First Emperor—Metropolitan Opera/High Definition Cinema Broadcast—Placido Domingo
German Requiem—Johannes Brahms
War Requiem—Benjamin Britten
Appalachian Journey—Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor
Requiem—Penderecki
Rutter: Requiem—John Rutter
Mozart Requiem
Faure’s Requiem
Mozart’s 25, 40—Mozart Meets Mariner
Nickel Creek—This Side
Bruce Springsteen—Nebraska
Classical Mix from Diane
Portrait of Kiri Te Kanawa
The Chairman Dances—John Adams with the San Francisco Symphony
Eugene Onegin—Tchaikovsky—PBS Broadcast from Metropolitan Opera—Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Liszt Piano Recital—Leif Ove Andsnes—EMI Classics
Il Trittico—Giacomo Puccini—Metropolitan Opera/High Definition Cinema Broadcast
Akhnaten by Philip Glass
the CIVIL warS—a tree is best measured when it is down—ACT V—The Rome Section—by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson
Albert Herring—by Benjamin Britten
The Turn of the Screw—by Benjamin Britten performed by the University of Tennessee Opera Workshop
Requiem—by Roman Maciejeski
Romeo and Juliette—by Gounod—Metropolitan Opera Goes to the Movies with Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna

Requiem Mix

Introitus or Intro—Brahms, Mozart
Introit and Kyrie—Faure
Dies Irae—Britten, Brahms
Pie Jesu—Rutter

Website Experiences

YouTube I Puritani by Bellini—Anna Netrebko sings The Mad Scene
YouTube Nixon in China by John Adams—Mandy Kelly sings I Am the Wife of Mao Zedong

*cheating—reading something or studying something because you "have to" and not because you love it.

If Your Guest Drinks from a Finger Bowl, What Do You Do?

Dear Emily Post,

I hope you don't mind my turning to you for advice, but I'm not sure. If party reporter Sally Quinn offers advice about guests who drink from a finger bowl, then what would you advise about guests who wash in tumblers?

Zorro has been such a perfect guest up to this point.



And, after all, as Sally might point out, "The most important thing you can do as a host or hostess is to make your guests feel comfortable, welcome, wanted."

So I guess I should just let Zorro wash in my glassware anytime, as long as he knows he is welcome here with us.

Betsy

ROUS Visits the Backstep Zoo

Dear Animal Planet,

Eat your heart out! The backstep zoo continues to grow. These animals are volunteering. Well, it is a Tennessee Zoo after all.

BRD

Rodent of Unusual Size Stops by for a Bite




ROUS Withdraws from Intimacy

The Plague

Dear Albert Camus,

I have been reading your masterpiece. Did you think it so?

It has taken me several tries to get beyond the point of no return with it. I almost got there the last time--half way through. You make us wait a long time.

Tarrou makes the difference for me.

At any rate, I like your statement:
"..there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea that may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency." (In one volume, this statement hits at p. 136. For me it hit on CD #4 I think.)

Common decency! Is this the Summum Bonum that I have been searching for? Be ye nice, one to another.

Perhaps it is enough.

Betsy

Zorro vs. Raccoon Tamer--Is This a Duel?

Dear Zorro Fans,

Back by popular demand!



Do not try this at home!

Betsy

Laws of Construction, a New Play by Anne GG, Dramatist Extraordinaire

Dearest Anne GG,

I have been thinking of you all week, for I know you are preparing for the big event, coming due after long months of preparation and labor. It is something special, and something that not all of us get to experience, quite, seeing that precious seed of an idea become implanted in your head, then form, gestate, reform, and become a complete whole.

This weekend it takes a new life and receives its own existence apart from you. You are still its mother, but you will be called on to separate yourself from it, in a way, and not return to it in the same way ever again. And you will say, “It is good,” and you will rest.

We are anxious to see your progeny, this play that has consumed your energy for a very long time. I will ask you to sign my playbill and I will cherish it as a memory in my heart.

With love and great pride,

Mother

What is the Summum Bonum? What is the Greatest Good in Life?

Dear Survey Takers,

On a piece of paper and in a scrawled, running off the paper, jerky handwriting that I recognize as my own. . . that writing, on scraps pulled from the floor of my car signifying something that must be written NOW, highway or no highway. . . I read this today.

"The summum bonum is the tonic to which we return, not just to find an elixer for health or happiness, but the tonic that is the tonal harmonic center of our existence, that tone where we find harmonic rest. It is our home.

"Certainly we can choose to leave this home. That choice is as human as opposable thumbs, but it is nonetheless our home."

So, that was my definition one day, while driving to work. What is your definition of the greatest good, the summum bonum of existence?

Betsy

What is The Tao, The Summum Bonum, or The Good?

Dear Clive Staples Lewis,

I didn’t cut my teeth on the tales of Narnia. My first visit was shortly before my own children met the lion, sailed with Caspian, and found themselves faced with the great dilemma of whether to set free the crazy man in the Silver Chair who called upon the name of Aslan.

I do dearly love those stories with the lion that is unashamedly dangerous. I love the talking animals and I love the children who are imperfectly courageous and kind but who have an unremitting sense that something important is going on. I love the Tertullian Spirit that the little Narnian visitors come to see, that “staying alive” is not the Sunum Bonum. They are faced with that ethical question that is so much our own, if not as obvious, “Must we live?” and answer in the negative.

You were a person of your time, and I won’t, here, discuss your mistaken conceptions about women and your female characters, though I may take them up sometime soon in an essay I have in my head entitled, “Why Did Lewis and Faulkner Discount Women?” Is that a little strong? Perhaps, for though you didn’t send Lucy or Susan to battle, you developed them as complete people and not as fools, true heroes of the story whose wisdom and intuition, and ACTION was every bit as integral to the salvation of Narnia as the sword play of the boys.

But I digress, for I am not reading the Narnia series right now. I am reading The Abolition of Man. I am intrigued by the Appendix entitled Illustrations of the Tao. In the book you defined the Tao as “a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart.” We post-moderns are struggling with this issue. Not just, what is this Tao, but does it exist?

I explored this subject a little in the early days of my blog in a survey entitled “What is a Characteristic of a Good Person.” It was more than a blog entry, for I had spent a number of months asking that question to many people in my life, from my mother to a waitress in Washington D.C. One of the interesting things about this experience was that most people did have an answer and the answers that I received did fall, to a great degree, within the parameters that are listed in your Appendix on the Tao. I have another interesting factoid about my blog survey, which I have discovered since I applied an analytic to my blog.

I get hits from all over the place. I’m fascinated that people from Caloocan to Wheaton to Calgary come to visit. The one blog entry that is hit regularly from everywhere, week after week, is that entry about the characteristics of a good person. How fascinating, that in a world of sex, violence, and war, people remain curious about goodness. I too am curious. I want to know goodness. I want to be good, in fact, in the face of both evil and my own tendency toward evil.

You say, (A of M, pg. 73), “We have been trying, like Lear, to have it both ways: to lay down our human prerogative and yet at the same time to retain it. It is impossible. Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own ‘natural’ impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.”

I remember a middle school history lesson on the importance of the Magna Carta. It was Ms. Ford who I remember, tiny in stature and generally rapid in her movements, stepping to a green chalk board, picking up a piece of chalk neatly poised in an aluminum holder, writing, The Magna Carta, and then briskly returning to the front of the desk, leaning back and looking at us intently. Ms. Ford was more precise than handsome Mr. D’Elia who taught English and wrote on a black board with dusty stubs of chalk, wrote, turned, licked his fingers, and asked our class to write articles for the school newspaper. Ms. Ford’s classes never got as far as World War II. Perhaps, she deliberately avoided reaching that point in more modern history, for she could not imagine teaching about the horrors of the holocaust and a world gone mad. But, oh, she could teach the Magna Carta.

Does Ms. Ford still teach the Tao of the Magna Carta, or has she been replaced by someone younger who aptly grapples with the ideas of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.

And what would Tertullian say about a philosophy that teaches that there is no Tao, only (what would Nietzsche call it) custom? Is there no longer, and was there never, anything to die for? When, Tertullian called out, “must we live?” should the answer have been, “Yes, for there is nothing greater, nothing holier than life itself, your own life, selfishly hoarded and protected and with nothing else to grant it higher meaning.”

I'm not a philosopher, and I'm not sure that I understand either Nietzsche or Wittgenstein. I think I could confidently say that Wittgenstein would say that all this talk about Tao, and Good, and Ethics is just simile without reference, hence nonsense. He would say, "I must admit it is nonsense to say that they have absolute value." However, even Wittgenstein, ends where many of us without such philosophic wit, more simply begin, that we have "a tendency in the human mind which[we] personally cannot help respecting deeply and [we] would not for [our lives] ridicule it." (Last sentence of 1929 Lecture on Ethics.)

So C.S. I lean toward your thinking here and toward the advice of Puddleglum from The Silver Chair, who said, "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all of those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones." I wonder what other people think?

Betsy DeGeorge

Rotoscoped Raccoon

Dear Max Fleischer,

I just want to tell you that I never want to do another rotoscoping project in all my days. My hat is off to you if you liked doing it.



Yes, it took a gazillion frames and as many drawings to create this stupid little project. I think I don't have enough OC in me to allow for more than one rotoscope in my entire life!!!

With sincere respect,

Betsy DeGeorge

*Note: I swear this is the last raccoon video I will post for a while.

I Puritani Never Had It So Good

Dear Anna Netrebko,

I am blown away. Pick me up. I'm on the floor. I haven't felt this way since I sat in the peanut gallery of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, PA, and watched as a rotund man with a white hankie named Luciano Pavarotti sang me to ecstasy decades ago.

You voice is beyond fine. It is bel canto at it's best. It has been too long since a voice of this caliber has taken center stage. What is the official operatic term? Woo-woo? No, Brava!


I had heard some of the hype about you, but, I've heard hype before. And this is more than hype, it's glorious.

So, anyway, I saw I Puritani (thank you Metropolitan Opera and Public Television) and though I knew I was seeing (hearing) something I'd never forget, I wasn't totally ready for the mad scene. Beautiful on a bad day with an off-key overweight diva, you turned it into a gloria. And the acrobatics were unparalleled. I've seen divas who demanded 3 pillows for the final act of Boheme. You scoff at the fools.

I regretted that I had not popped a tape into the VCR. Silly me, depend upon YouTube. (Note: Even if you are not an opera buff, fast-forward this to 3:51 and watch Anna Netrebko sing part of this scene upside down.)

Lucky, lucky us, to have you singing.

Enjoying,

Betsy

Zorro--Million Dollar Baby?

Dear Zorro Fans,

It was a fight of sorts but with some provocation as you will see on the video that you are about to roll. Yes, Zorro had goosed Pompom the cat. It wasn’t really an act of aggression. It was more like a practical joke. (I’m thinking of getting Zorro a Whoopie Cushion for his birthday.)

But Pompom took it hard. He is a retiring sort of cat. Normally more scared than anything. But this had crossed his line and he stood up for himself, what can I say. I do think that it was a little unfair of Macatam to get involved. He had no particular offense to equalize. He just climbed on. The video isn’t so good at this point, so you can’t really see how many whacks Zorro was taking.



Z is patient, a peaceful spirit, and perhaps a coward, though I would not say this to his face. Still, I felt bad that Pompom couldn't take a little joke and that our hero, Zorro, took such a "whuppin'".

Betsy

P.S. The stills in between the clips are there to give you a better look at the star of this series.

Ash Wednesday by AnneGG

Dear AnneGG,

Thanks for letting me post this. I am awed by this work.

BRD

Ash Wednesday

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday. At work this afternoon, we all sat around eating leftover fastnachts instead of fasting. “Hey, how come lent is forty days long?” “I think because Jesus fasted forty days in the desert.” We Protestants aren’t big into lent. Fastnachts are like jelly doughnuts with no jelly, just thick clumps of dough deep fried in animal fat. You shall present as an offering by fire to the Lord the fat that covers the entrails . . . I’m thinking of giving up jelly doughnuts for lent.

If you are offering a goat, you shall bring it before the Lord and lay your hand on its head; it shall be slaughtered in the tent of meeting. While Alicia and I were walking today, we saw a dead deer beside the train tracks. At first we couldn’t tell what it was; the flesh was rotted away, leaving only hide and bone, and we could peer into its lungless ribcage. Alicia waited patiently with her back turned as I stared, both repelled and transfixed by the dead carcass. I went a step closer, sniffing the air on purpose for the rancid odor of decay. From dust you came, and to dust you shall return. As we walked back along the tracks, we saw some of its fur lying in clumps, and somebody’s old shoe, and a pair of railroad spikes. Alicia picked up the spikes and commented dryly that she didn’t like how the Old Testament had so many commandments that required slaughtering things. I nodded. I’m thinking of giving up meat for lent.

In fact, maybe I’ll start eating fish every Friday. If I were Catholic, I would attend mass today. I would kneel with the other contrite congregants at the altar, in the dim, smoky light filtering in through stained glass windows, the sickly-sweet odor of incense burning in my nostrils. A priest would daub a cross of ash onto my forehead and pronounce sacred words in muttered Latin: “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” On the same walk, Alicia and I discovered a dead skunk, not yet really rotting, but lying stiff on its back. Its legs stuck straight up into the air, and blood trickled from its mouth. For without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins. I wonder if animals go to hell.

Like Jesus in the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended into hell.” Hell, the burning lake of fire. Hell, separation from God. Hell, eternal death. Their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur . . . I’m thinking about giving up hell for lent. Hell is separation -- Ben and I are not on speaking terms these days. His last message is still saved on my answering machine, from the day before we ended it all: “I’m trying. But things always get so hard with us. If you want to play football, we’re meeting at four.” Too close, never close enough – isn’t that the human condition? This is the second death. I’m thinking of giving up breathing for lent.

“Hey, how come lent is forty days long?” “It used to be only a week, just the week of the Passion.” The red, saturated ribcage of a deer. A goat. A lamb. You shall bring it before the Lord, and it shall be slaughtered in the tent of meeting. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son . . . Alicia says when she hears the train’s whistle, she knows it is God saying, “I love you.” I wonder if, when the train made contact, that deer had the same thought as Jesus had when God turned his eyes away from the bloody suffering: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” Death is separation.

Every time they gather together, Catholics participate in the Eucharist. This is my body, broken for you. When the congregation takes the bread and wine, they say that it actually becomes the blood and body of Christ, and Christ becomes part of the participant. Part of their sinews and bones and connective tissue. Part of the force that sustains their life. This is my blood, poured out for the remission of sins. We Protestants don’t believe in transubstantiation. Anne Lamott writes about strewing her best friend’s ashes over the water near the Golden Gate Bridge, about how the ashes stuck to her clothes and hair and fingers. “I licked my friend’s ashes off my hand, to taste them, to taste her, to taste what was left after all that was clean and alive had been consumed.” Anne Lamott must be Catholic.

During lent, a participant may either forgo something or take something up. (Jesus, for example, took up a cross and a pair of railroad spikes.) I’m thinking of taking up transubstantiation. For even we Protestants crave that kind of union with other people, with God. Too close, never close enough – Isn’t that the human condition? And if death is separation, then life is union. During his darkest days, Ben used to pick pieces of my long hair off of my clothes and eat them. “The closest to heaven I’ll ever be,” he’d say. But really he was just trying to thwart death.
O Jesus, you place on my forehead the sign of my sister Death: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” God help me, Ben, I miss you so much I can hardly breathe. I miss your smell, tiny particles of you snuffed into my body through my nostrils, becoming part of me just like the rotting stench of the deer. Like the Eucharist on Ash Wednesday, the body and blood, “that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish.”

Later, Alicia and I saw from a distance a pair of live deer, frolicking in the woods. “They look happy,” Alicia said. I nodded. I’m thinking of taking up immortality for lent.

Copyright 2001 Deborah Harbin All Rights Reserved

There and Back Again: Dynamic Linking from Word to Excel

Field codes: Link field - Word - Microsoft Office Online

Dear Absolutely Everyone,

This information is for you! Have you even wanted to construct a Word document with a link to information in an Excel document that would dynamically update every time you updated the Excel document. "Yes," you say, "of course." Well, the answer to this is "Paste Special."

I never realized that Paste Special created a field.

Copy the cell or range from Excel. 'Paste special' into Word. If you choose the link option from the dialog box, it will automatically update whenever you update and save the Excel file. "This," you are saying, "is good stuff." I knew you'd like it.

Of course, a lot of you already knew this, but you are just saying, "Why didn't she ask."

The code for the pasted field is viewable, by the way, if (in Word) you go to Tools/Options/View tab and check Field codes.

When you do, you'll see code like this.
{LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\bubba\\My Documents\\test.xls" "Sheet1!R1C3" \a \t}

Let's not discuss all this code, but if you are working with something like this, you may want an example to look at.

Betsy

Ash to Ash Wednesday

Dear Anne GG,

I am remembering, this week, that powerful article you wrote, entitled Ash Wednesday. May I post a link to that? (She said "Yes.") I am remembering because it was, last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday.

Growing up Baptist, and even more than that, growing up in the “fundamentalist” tradition, Ash Wednesday lacked symbolic meaning to me. Lent lacked meaning. It fell into the black hole, no, under the skirts of the great whore of the Apocalypse, that we were taught to avoid at all costs. So, it wasn’t until a few years ago and a number of life shapeshifts from then, when I began participating in services at an Episcopal church that I engaged with the idea of Ash Wednesday.

Why indeed should we, every year, forty days (plus Sundays*), before the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, take on the sign of mourning?

“Ash to ash, dust to dust”, they say, and with two flicks of a thumb the mark of death attaches itself to our foreheads. And we are on our knees saying, “Yes.”

We have taken on a sign of mourning. We are engaging symbolically with our mortality and the mortality that God in Jesus took upon himself.

Now, as my obsession with requiems might signal, I am not one to miss the fact that one day I will die. I fret about it, I embrace it. I am not one who is confused that perhaps I am the one person in the universe who will achieve immortality. So Ash Wednesday fits my personality. I get it. It is time to mourn. It is time to fast, for the Savior of the universe is about to die, and not only that, my own sin, which I engage in actively and deliberately, implicates me in the Lord’s demise.

God knows how we are formed,
Remembering that we are dust.
All flesh is as grass,
Flourishing like a dandelion in the field;
And when the wind picks up and blows over,
It is gone.
And even the dirt that gave birth to it,
Remembers it no more.

You betcha I mourn.
And I’ll fast and pray, hoping for light and life in forty days.

May your month be full of meaning,

BRD aka MOM

*Note: Something I learned from my priest and friend, SuZanne, is that you don’t mourn on Sunday. That day the symbol of resurrection takes precedence over the symbol of mourning.

The Adventures of Zorro: Part II

Zorro,

I may have had thoughts of fixing the leaky faucet at the back of our home, but now that I realize it is like a mini stream for the wildlife in time of drought, I'll have to think twice.

Take it easy little buddy.

Betsy

Requiem for the Doomed

Dear Wilfred Owen,

How is it that we, as a people or as individuals, globally, or singly when standing on a hill under the sun, find it difficult to give up warring? Why is the other cheek so rarely, no matter our religious affiliation, no matter how replete our wealth, no matter the level of our education and experience, no matter how inane the complaint, our response? No, it seems our cheeks must be defended at all costs.

So, we strap our powers upon our thighs and strut. And oh, the strutting does at times seem almost right, upon the rubble in the squares of New York, with bull horn and an eye on the, (how did you say it?) “the arrogance which needs [our] harm.” And with careful preparation, we, for the fight if not for the peace, and with careful preparation, we, for the beginning, if not for the end, so with careful preparation, we, for the death if not for the life, we spy the enemy by satellite and begin to “beat it down before its sins grow worse.”

So we the people, arbiters of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, unite as Eves, and say,
“Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.”

And when he began “his spilling mess-tins” from our own hands, were we surprised?

So now we vote to still the carnage, long after the Pandora of this engagement has outted her box and begun it’s filling with the men and women of the 278th from next door and down the road in Davis County and Tulsa and California and Windsor Castle and Baghdad and Bagdad and Bagdad and Bagdad.

It is never too late to hear the poet. It is never too late to stop whistling while the scythe shaves. But, dear God, it is also never too early.

Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet Saeclum in Favilla,. . .
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus:
Huic ergo parce Deus.

Wilford, The world should thank you for your dying words. Oh that we would hear them now.

Betsy



Note: Wilfred Owen wrote the poetry, (mostly unpublished before his death on the battlefield, just a week before the armistice that ended WWI) Anthem for the Doomed, that shaped Benjamin Britten's pacifist musical statement entitled War Requiem.

A Woman at Harvard? What Would Goethe Say?

Dear Dr. Faust,

"Nor past nor future now the soul employ,
The present only constitutes our joy." That's what he'd say!

Or, well, I'd say that, anyway, on the occasion of your appointment to the presidency of Harvard. And according to the news article I read,

"Some Harvard professors, particularly women, greeted the decision with euphoria. 'Harvard’s waited a long time — since 1636,' said Patricia Albjerg Graham, an emeritus professor of the history of education at Harvard, recalling that when she was a postdoctoral fellow in 1972, she was not allowed to enter the main door of the faculty club or eat in the main dining room."

So, Harvard has been waiting since long before Goethe and his Faust (1808) for women, and for one particular woman, to tempt fate and take the helm. Holy cow, this is like walking on the moon. One small step for a human, one giant leap for humankind.

It's not that we feminists should go overboard, making distinctions. That, I suppose is what got us into the mess of oppression in the first place. What we are looking for is fine folk of all types, folk with special talents to offer. And from what "they" are saying you are a "special folk." I read that,

"Faculty members and officials familiar with the search said Dr. Faust’s leadership style — her collaborative approach and considerable people skills — would be vital for soothing a campus ripped apart by the battles over Dr. Summers, whom many accused of having an abrasive, confrontational style. 'She combines outstanding scholarship with an uncanny ability to administer both well and with a heart,' said Judith Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

"In the end, some Harvard professors said, Dr. Faust’s management style might have been more important to the nine members of the presidential search committee than any desire to name a woman. 'My own sense is that it’s a new template for leadership, and that probably is not unrelated to gender, but it ought not get eclipsed by it,' said Richard P. Chait, a professor of higher education at Harvard. Dr. Chait, who studies university management, noted that in several recent changes of leadership of major American corporations, tough, even bullying leaders were replaced by more mild-mannered consensus builders."

Now, I'm not one who believes there is no difference between men and women. And I think that it has taken some time in the progress of gender relations in the West for women to rise to leadership who did not tend toward what might be termed "the masculine" in their leadership style. And thank goodness for those leaders. But now, are we ready for women to bring to the table what women have to offer, to lead in a way that women are especially skilled? And then, without distinction, but fully appreciating what you and other women have to offer, we can better appreciate all things, and we can better find our kindred selves in others, men and women. As Goethe would say,

"[Words] must flow out from the heart.
And, when the soul is touched with passion's flame,
We look around and ask - Who burns the same?"

So this week, news of Dr. Faust’s selection was greeted warmly by Harvard students and particularly because you are a woman who represents well the passions that enflame many of us who are women and many who are men. "It’s about time," said Elisa Olivieri, a junior. "Talent is no longer ‘single, male, childless.’ It’s an excellent acknowledgement that the face of talent has changed.”

Congratulations!

Betsy

What are the Keys to Good Parenting? A Survey

Did you ever notice that most books on parenting are written from the parents' perspective? Maybe we've got this thing backwards. How about the Keys to Good Parenting written from the perspective of the child, albeit an adult child. Help me here. Thinking back, what were the best things that your parents did in the process of raising you? What did they do right?

One word descriptions or many paragraphs would be gratefully received.

Requiem Introitus--Mozart

Dear Mozart,

I know this is nuts, but I've taken a particular interest in Requiem Masses. Your's is one of my favorites. I've been thinking of creating a Requiem mix with my favorite sections collected from the many I have listened to. For instance, have you heard Rutter's Agnus Dei. Spectacular. And of course Verdi's Libera Me.

At any rate, as part of my current instructional technology course, I produced this odd interpretation. I just wrote to apologize. I really respect the piece.



Introitus

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Lord, grant them eternal rest,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Te decet hymnus, Deus in Sion;
et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

You shall have praise in Zion, O God,
and homage shall be paid to you in Jerusalem.

Exaudi, exaudi orationem meam;
ad te omnis caro veniet.

Hear my prayer.
All flesh shall come before you.

Dona eis requiem aeternam, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Lord, grant them eternal rest,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Betsy

Writers Writing about Writing, Right?

Dear Billy Collins,

Some of my favorite writing is that of writers writing about writing. But you have taken that a step further, a poet poetizing about poeting.

The other day I read, I don’t remember where, (Where would that have been? Online? In a bookstore? Metropulse? Not here.) I read a passage by John Lennon that brought you to mind. He talked about wondering why people in his life didn’t notice how special he was as a child. His observation was a bit like yours in You, Reader from The Trouble With Poetry:

I wonder how you are going to feel
When you find out
That I wrote this instead of you.

Is writing, and especially writing poetry, a competition of some sort? Are we, writers or aspiring writers, really so self-absorbed that we think that it is only we who see the beauty and must announce it, teletyping it out across the wires, racing to say it first, to break the news. . . Sumer is icumen in or. . . the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. Do writers write to write or do they write to be read, or perhaps, (ah, less worthy than we thought) do they write to write better than other writers?

Certainly, our greatest writers have left behind a trail of evidences about why, after all, they are writing. Annie Dillard describes the writing life as if an architect, "laying out a line of words." Welty wrote and not satisfied to tell us just about her writing beginnings, told us both what she would and would not advise.

But, this is your life and you have the pulpit, should we criticize you for using it? No, for we wish to hear your words, see your visions, look out your windows. And after all, you are right that:

The clerks are at their desks,
The miners are down in their mines,

but

The poets are looking out their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Thanks for writing.

Betsy

Zorro the Raccoon Visits the DeGeorges

Dear Zorro,

It is so nice to have you join us as a new member of our flock. What was it you were saying last night as you ate the cat food?

"Don't these people serve sweet tea?"
"These cats are crowding me a bit."



At any rate, come back for a quick dinner anytime. We love watching you eat.

Fondly,

Betsy

20th Century Music or Ooh, That Modern Music Really Drives Them Wild

Dear Arnold Schoernberg and Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky,

I was blown away recently! I never got it before and now I really, really get it. It is so incredibly interesting.

OK, I have to credit Robert Greenberg from the San Francisco Conservatory, because he is the one who explained it to me in his course on Understanding Great Music. I have been a fan of what I call 20th century music for a long time, but I never understood what you three composers were pulling off exactly, until now.

Arnold, you were conducting a Freedom Ride or a rescue, a liberation effort. It is so clear now. Robert says your were freeing melody from the enslavement of harmony. Yes. It’s amazing. I am enamoured by Pierrot Lunaire and it's sprechstimme. (See cool pix of manuscript.) You said, away with traditional harmonies, we have twelve tones, let's use them. We will no longer be shackled to traditional harmonic expression. (As Greenberg says, you freed "melody from the predetermined control of harmony by ignoring Pythagorean definitions of fifths and embracing an ignorance of dissonance." Wow.)

And Claude, you were doing a similar thing, approaching harmonies in new ways and allowing them to speak freely, apart from the rigid command of a melodic line. You said, "I have tried to obey a law of beauty which appears to be singularly ignored in dealing with dramatic music. The characters of the drama endeavor to sing like real persons, and not in an arbitrary language on antiquated traditions. Hence, the reproach leveled at my alleged partiality for monotone declamation, in which there is no melody… To begin with this is not true. Besides, the feeling of character cannot be continually expressed in melody. Also, dramatic melody should be totally different from the melody in general… I do not pretend to have discovered anything. . . but I have tried to trace a path that others may follow, broadening it with individual discoveries which will, perhaps, free dramatic music from the heavy yoke under which existed for so long."

And Igor, you are the champion of rhythms and the force of the beat. There are people who might say that the father of rock and roll is Chuck Berry, or Little Richard, or Elvis Presley, or even Johnnie Johnson. I, though, look to you, the wild innovator who cut the cords that bound rhythm to music as merely accentuation, and called upon it to speak on it's own, with a voice as primitive as a rite to dispel winter and cultivated enough to set the tempo for all the music of the 20th century.

The thing I love about classical music is that it is, like great literature and great art, so deep that you can spend your life trying to understand it. These moments of great revelation in understanding are wonderful.

Thanks Robert Greenberg. And thanks Arnold, Claude, and Igor for your vision and the gift of music so different from anything anyone had ever heard before.

Betsy

How to Saddle a Horse Plus How to Be Desaddled

WARNING: Scroll down only if you aren't medical-x-ray intolerant. (Warning as per request of Conversely!)

Dear Nebuchadnezzar,

I don't know whether to love you,



or hate you!


OK! I still love you.

Betsy

P.S. My first YouTube post. I am so techno-pleased.

The Advent: Nativity by Gustav Doré

Dear David,

Thank you for this nativity scene. It is one of my favorite illustrations from one of my favorite acquisitions of this year, i.e. The Dover production of The Doré Bible Illustrations, the 241 electrotype woodcut plates from La Sainte Bible of 1865. Once again we can thank the French for something of remarkable beauty and memorable magnitude.

And I thank you for finding this wonderful volume for me in the dusty piles of Betty’s Antique Store in Lenoir City (pronounced not as in the French tradition, but as the first half of the way George Strait might call one or the other of two roadies standing, smoking, behind the Yamaha mixer, ”Len or Billy Bob, get that Guild for me, will ya?”) Betty’s is closed now. I’m not sure what happened, no giant sale like the Brown Squirrel runs every couple of months, "Last Chance before Closing!" But she is really out of business, empty windows, empty floor, nothing but the sign to remind us of the treasures that once were available behind the chipped china display around the corner from the pile of old Saturday Evening Posts.

But back to the subject. The wonder of the Doré book for me (and for folks of my age category) is, as stated in the intro to it. “There can be little doubt that these engravings . . . have fixed the iconography of Bible in our minds.” I would say, “my age and tradition” but you are not of my religious tradition, and you recognized it’s classic import right away. The pictures in this black and white volume take me to the remembrances of the stories of the Bible, The Brazen Serpent, David and Goliath (replete with gory decapitation), Daniel in the Den of Lions, Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery, Jesus and the Disciples Going to Emmaus, various images of the Crucifixion, and of course this one, The Nativity. I’d say even younger folks have been impacted by the works of this masterpiece from 1865, (Can any good thing come out of the 1860’s?) because so much of the biblically-related artistic imagination of the 20th century found its roots here in the pages of the Doré Bible.

Back to this image of the advent--It is such a nice one. Men and women who are quite authentic in their response to a baby, haloing around the Christ child. Is Joseph napping? The animals are precious too. The little one reminds me of the lamb we had once, Baa-aa-b. You didn’t know us then, but Cate will doubtless remember.

Well, in all my thinking about advent this year, I have enjoyed considering it in light of this image best of all. And I have this image thanks to you. We will have to go antiquing again real soon!!!

May your holiday be wonderful. Hope to see you soon.

Betsy

Top 4 or 5 or 7 of 2006

Dear Listmakers,

Meandering around blogdom, I find, everywhere, lists of favorites from 2006. I'm overwhelmed at all the books/movies/music et al. that you people have studied. I feel like Charlie Brown in the face of all the lists. (Note: I would point to an online cartoon of Charlie Brown and Linus looking at clouds, but the Schulz estate is pretty tight-lipped with their stuff. Think: Linus and Charlie lying on their backs in a field watching the clouds. Linus says, I see Moses leading the children of Israel across the Red Sea with Pharoah's chariots close behind. Charlie says, I was just going to say that I saw a ducky and a doggy.)

If I were to make a list of the top. . . 4 or 5 or7 things from 2006 (all genre) I'd include (in no particular order of importance):

1) A series of tapes by Robert Greenberg about Understanding the World's Great Music. (Robert, I do plan to post a blog-letter to you real soon!)

2) The blog Paterson Project. Very nice concept and because of it I've discovered the poetry of William Carlos Williams.

3) Toni Morrison's books. These are not easy books for me, but, I think they are honest and expansive for me.

4) The Requiem Mass. It has been a sad year in ways for me, but I have found great rest the way folks for centuries have done, through the requiem. Mozart, Verdi, Faure, Rutter.

5) I haven't seen many movies made this year, none that readily come to mind as meriting mention. One I should have seen before, but that I saw this year, is Crash. I know this movie has positive and negative following, but I did respect what it was saying, and, I do know that crash.

6) I heard bell hooks speak several times this year. She is certainly a worthy thinker.

7) Blogging. I began blogging as an experiment related to a presentation on technology at a conference. It has become important to me as a way to develop as a writer, but it's more than that, somehow.

OK. So that's it. I guess what I'll have to do is write a To Do List. Now, I could come up with an impressive one of those!

Third Week of Advent: O Lord, Come By Here

What is the attraction of the simple song that we sing and mock, love and hate, play with and worship by? Kumbayah, Lord. I suppose part of its glow is that it allows for anything. Someone's singing, someone's praying, someone's crying, someone's laughing, someone's dancing, someone's sleeping, someone's sinning, someone's serving, I suppose someone could even be having intercourse and you could Kubayah.

This song allows us to be exactly who we are and still say Kumbayah, Lord.

So, in this spirit, the third week of advent could be a true celebration, not of chaos and lasciviousness, but certainly of acceptance and forgiveness. You have not come, Jesus, in the form of authority and pomp, (see revisionist creed) but you've kind of sidled up to us with the rhythm of jimbay drums, and the beat of our own hearts, and, and participation in who we really are.

Kumbayah, my Lord, Kumbayah.

Betsy